Since the skill tree is being changed, are the missing boff skills which are listed for boffs but cannot be obtained (e.g. Aux to Battery 3) going to be added as craftable unlocks for Captains?
"New options are being introduced that will allow players to invest in Skills that will increase Shield Hardness, Hull and Shield Regeneration, Armor and Shield Penetration, or provide cooldown reductions for certain Bridge Officer Abilities."
More shield penetration? Ugh
Most people can't get enough penetration though.... I mean...oh, dear....
To quote Sov42... :GIGGITY!!
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
This sounds really bad if I am reading this right. So if we want to get control defense we also have to be a control offense powerhouse. If we want to have drain defense, repair and the rest we also have to be a drain expert. I really do not like that.
My biggest concern is it looks like players will have to give up skill that are in our builds now and take skills we do not want due to the way skills are grouped up. I don’t see how you can condense down 315skills into 50 and make it so players lose nothing.
P.S please put something in for torpedo and mine pilots. We often get left out.
EDIT:
“Other consolidated Skills exist, such as combining both existing “Weapon Specialization” skills into superior choices that improve both Energy and Kinetic weapons, rather than encouraging players to ignore one or the other.”
Specialization is a really poor choice of word. Specialization means focused on one thing. Weapon Mastery would be a better word.
That’s skill change alone is not going to change anything when gear and tactical consoles make you want to use only 1 or the other. A while back you changed the tactical consoles to encouraging players ignore one or the other. Now you change skills to try to get players to use both? That’s a little inconsistent isn’t it?
First, are all toons going to have to regain these "experience points" sort of like we had to start the specialization from scratch, or do we get to access everything post-patch when we log in? Come to think of it, what's the difference between this and the specialization system? The tree even looks the same. I mean it's not BAD, just seems redundant.
Wish the ground skill tree was a bit bigger, doesn't look precise enough. I mean is there a tree for a tac melee build, an eng shield tank build, a bruiser build, a medic build, a health tank build, a pet build? I'm not seeing it.
It does have some disadvantages compared to the current system, not sure it's better, but at least it's a change, we need more of that.
This sounds really bad if I am reading this right. So if we want to get control defense we also have to be a control offense powerhouse. If we want to have drain defense, repair and the rest we also have to be a drain expert. I really do not like that.
My biggest concern is it looks like players will have to give up skill that are in our builds now and take skills we do not want due to the way skills are grouped up. I don’t see how you can condense down 315skills into 50 and make it so players lose nothing.
Exactly. There's a lot of stuff I simply do not want or need in my build now, and I don't like being forced to take something just to get the thing I might need/want.
If I wanted to play Diablo, I'd go play Diablo.
I really think this is going to put yet another nail in STO's coffin. Bad decision after bad decision.
Not simplified, simplistic... none of us has the information needed to make a direct comparison. Like I said, we need to see what it does in practice before saying that a ratio of points spendable has any relevance (given that we don't know that the points in the new thing will do just yet). You could be entirely correct, @daveny could be entirely correct... but we just don't know until we see what we're spending on rather than just how much can be spent on something.
The whole "available points to available options" ratio has nothing to do with a nerf as such, you are correct. You could theoretically allow the same builds with a much lower ratio (by just adding new stuff), as you could with a higher one. The only thing it affects is the possible variation of builds - and that one is maximised (1) by number of choices in total and (2) by getting close to 50% of them filled on a maxed character. If you have only one point to spend or if you have all but one slot filled, it would be the same (meager) amount of variation: the choice of one skill, in one case to get in the other to not get.
So in having around 50% of the skills available to obtain we are actually the farthest away from "everybody having the same build" at least in theory. In practice, there will always be some "must haves" and some "whatever are they good for?" skills, which will decrease variation. This can, however, be mitigated or increased by the tree system - you may have to get "meh" skills to get your one goal, while a "must have" at the fifth branch can make everything before it "must have" as well.
Long story short: you cannot use simple ratios here to determine "nerf or no nerf" at all, and you can only use them as a rough indicator for "everybody gets the same build under the new system". It has itself a high number of possibilities, not as high as before (less options available) but the question is how much some of the choices before really did matter - the more broken down they are, the less the individual one really affects, and how many will now.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Aw, my post is going to be on the 7'th page. Anyways thanks, really looking forward to these changes. The last QOL change you made was the ground and space trait separation which was great. Keep up the good work guys. 2015 was a great year for STO i'm looking forward to 2016.
If you want a suggestion for things I think players would like it would be to please add more ground and space skills (from the reputation to be used. You get all these skills and then you only get to use four or five. Honestly most players use zero of the abilities from most of the reputations. Personally I would like it very much if you went back to allowing people to choose four from each with one active the way it was originally. Or at least let people choose one or two from each reputation.
This sounds really bad if I am reading this right. So if we want to get control defense we also have to be a control offense powerhouse. If we want to have drain defense, repair and the rest we also have to be a drain expert. I really do not like that.
My biggest concern is it looks like players will have to give up skill that are in our builds now and take skills we do not want due to the way skills are grouped up. I don’t see how you can condense down 315skills into 50 and make it so players lose nothing.
P.S please put something in for torpedo and mine pilots. We often get left out.
Exactly, IMO this is looking very bad right now as we ultimately loose the ability to fine-tune our ship builds.
Yes there may be A LOT to take in with the current skill tree, but ultimately it gives us the players much more power and control over the ships we fly.
Don't take that away from us.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I'd like to know a bit more about Coordination Protocols
Is this strictly for hangar pets, or will this also grant bonuses to pets that we can "summon"? I'm thinking separated saucers and the Aquarius (and its kdf counterpart) mostly.
Just hangar pets.
I'd like to humbly request that you reconsider this. It unduly narrows the usefulness of this spec. It also gives yet another advantage to ships with hangers over those with just pet consoles. Hangers pets already get hanger commands, increasing stats, elite versions, and don't even require a console slot.
looks like they are trying to set up a new system they can monetize in the future. Just like all the other over hauls.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
I see a lot of people complaining about it already...
At least wait till us (bug hunters or tribble testers) have broken it down to shed some more light...
(See my first post on Pg.1 just below yours)
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
We're proud to announce our new Skill System Revamp! We have set out to create a more streamlined experience that makes gaining levels and skills more enjoyable and impactful.
It certainly adds new sockets to put in some game mechanics that are much needed.
I would love to see a skill than adds half of your crit chance to the proc chance of your weapons. Right now Antiproton is king over all other energy types for damage dealing because its nifty feature scales with crit chance and all the other weapon special effects don't. Adding a portion of crit chance to proc chance would go a long way towards putting the other five energy types back on par and greatly open up synergistic gearing options.
We're proud to announce our new Skill System Revamp! We have set out to create a more streamlined experience that makes gaining levels and skills more enjoyable and impactful.
It certainly adds new sockets to put in some game mechanics that are much needed.
I would love to see a skill than adds half of your crit chance to the proc chance of your weapons. Right now Antiproton is king over all other energy types for damage dealing because its nifty feature scales with crit chance and all the other weapon special effects don't. Adding a portion of crit chance to proc chance would go a long way towards putting the other five energy types back on par and greatly open up synergistic gearing options.
some of those procs you REALLY don't want to have higher than 2.5% if only for sanity's sake...elachi immediately comes to mind, as does phaser and polaron
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Not sure how this will end up as we know now that some skills cost 3 out of our 46 space or 10 ground points, so we will probably end up more narrowly focused in this system than with our current one. Not seeing this as an improvement from a player perspective but more as a marketing ploy to get people to keep buying more respecs than they currently do.
When it arrives on Tribble we will know more but for know I refuse to cheer on it's arrival.
My apologies if this has already been posted, I can't be bothered to read through several pages of posts but....
I hereby predict we'll be seeing purchasable skills in lockboxes in a few weeks or months to come. Either that or some other way to monetize this will come out of it.
Good I will like this new system. And I get a chance to redo my Specs. Some of my stuff is kinda messed up on my first 2 characters. So this will make me do it better this time around.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I'm curious how this will affect one piece of gear in particular: The Romulan Engines. Will they continue boosting Attack Patterns, or be switched to something else since that skill no longer exists?
Items that grant Attack Patterns will be translated to granting one of the new Skills. Probably either Weapon Penetration or Long-Range Targeting.
That raises a point. Those of us who are not Gold accounts won't have access to Tribble to see the effects of the skill revamp or experiment with them.
When the revamp goes live, we will be forced to select skills immediately. But we won't know in advance how our items and traits have been modified, will we? Are we going to have to select skills blindly?
The only question I have is how this will affect current players, regardless of their level. Will we be given the chance to start over and reselect our skills, or are you going to just leave us to dry?
As I've already mentioned, all existing players will automatically have their Skills refunded when this system goes to Holodeck. You will be automatically granted the correct number of Space Points and Ground Points based on your current level.
Whats the amount of "maxed" Spec points we get in the current system as of now? 90 or 120? it was discussed before in other forums but cant remember and just want to make sure at least we get this refunded when the new system starts.
This doesn't tell us if we all will be starting from scratch or will Level-60 players be able to mostly fill the tree at the get-go?
^^ This. I'm extremely skeptical, tbh. For one, a tooltip showing when you traverse and MouseOver a tree, is a lot more confusing then just the flat-out skills screen.
Also, consolidating skills you de facto lose on the deal, as, like Risian4 said, I may want to invest in Graviton Generators, but not in Subspace decompiler, etc.
Whats the amount of "maxed" Spec points we get in the current system as of now? 90 or 120? it was discussed before in other forums but cant remember and just want to make sure at least we get this refunded when the new system starts.
For the umpteenth time -- Specs are not Skills. We are not touching Specializations, nor have any need to change or refund your points in that regard, when this system revamp goes live.
Your Skills will be reset appropriately.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Whats the amount of "maxed" Spec points we get in the current system as of now? 90 or 120? it was discussed before in other forums but cant remember and just want to make sure at least we get this refunded when the new system starts.
For the umpteenth time -- Specs are not Skills. We are not touching Specializations, nor have any need to change or refund your points in that regard, when this system revamp goes live.
Your Skills will be reset appropriately.
why do i get the feeling you were repeatedly bashing your head against your keyboard shortly before typing that?
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Comments
:l
Bug Hunters Assemble
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
My biggest concern is it looks like players will have to give up skill that are in our builds now and take skills we do not want due to the way skills are grouped up. I don’t see how you can condense down 315skills into 50 and make it so players lose nothing.
P.S please put something in for torpedo and mine pilots. We often get left out.
EDIT:
“Other consolidated Skills exist, such as combining both existing “Weapon Specialization” skills into superior choices that improve both Energy and Kinetic weapons, rather than encouraging players to ignore one or the other.”
Specialization is a really poor choice of word. Specialization means focused on one thing. Weapon Mastery would be a better word.
That’s skill change alone is not going to change anything when gear and tactical consoles make you want to use only 1 or the other. A while back you changed the tactical consoles to encouraging players ignore one or the other. Now you change skills to try to get players to use both? That’s a little inconsistent isn’t it?
Wish the ground skill tree was a bit bigger, doesn't look precise enough. I mean is there a tree for a tac melee build, an eng shield tank build, a bruiser build, a medic build, a health tank build, a pet build? I'm not seeing it.
It does have some disadvantages compared to the current system, not sure it's better, but at least it's a change, we need more of that.
Exactly. There's a lot of stuff I simply do not want or need in my build now, and I don't like being forced to take something just to get the thing I might need/want.
If I wanted to play Diablo, I'd go play Diablo.
I really think this is going to put yet another nail in STO's coffin. Bad decision after bad decision.
The whole "available points to available options" ratio has nothing to do with a nerf as such, you are correct. You could theoretically allow the same builds with a much lower ratio (by just adding new stuff), as you could with a higher one. The only thing it affects is the possible variation of builds - and that one is maximised (1) by number of choices in total and (2) by getting close to 50% of them filled on a maxed character. If you have only one point to spend or if you have all but one slot filled, it would be the same (meager) amount of variation: the choice of one skill, in one case to get in the other to not get.
So in having around 50% of the skills available to obtain we are actually the farthest away from "everybody having the same build" at least in theory. In practice, there will always be some "must haves" and some "whatever are they good for?" skills, which will decrease variation. This can, however, be mitigated or increased by the tree system - you may have to get "meh" skills to get your one goal, while a "must have" at the fifth branch can make everything before it "must have" as well.
Long story short: you cannot use simple ratios here to determine "nerf or no nerf" at all, and you can only use them as a rough indicator for "everybody gets the same build under the new system". It has itself a high number of possibilities, not as high as before (less options available) but the question is how much some of the choices before really did matter - the more broken down they are, the less the individual one really affects, and how many will now.
If you want a suggestion for things I think players would like it would be to please add more ground and space skills (from the reputation to be used. You get all these skills and then you only get to use four or five. Honestly most players use zero of the abilities from most of the reputations. Personally I would like it very much if you went back to allowing people to choose four from each with one active the way it was originally. Or at least let people choose one or two from each reputation.
Anyways, keep up the good work guys, thanks!
Exactly, IMO this is looking very bad right now as we ultimately loose the ability to fine-tune our ship builds.
Yes there may be A LOT to take in with the current skill tree, but ultimately it gives us the players much more power and control over the ships we fly.
Don't take that away from us.
I'd like to humbly request that you reconsider this. It unduly narrows the usefulness of this spec. It also gives yet another advantage to ships with hangers over those with just pet consoles. Hangers pets already get hanger commands, increasing stats, elite versions, and don't even require a console slot.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
(See my first post on Pg.1 just below yours)
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
And more reason not to give them money.
It certainly adds new sockets to put in some game mechanics that are much needed.
I would love to see a skill than adds half of your crit chance to the proc chance of your weapons. Right now Antiproton is king over all other energy types for damage dealing because its nifty feature scales with crit chance and all the other weapon special effects don't. Adding a portion of crit chance to proc chance would go a long way towards putting the other five energy types back on par and greatly open up synergistic gearing options.
some of those procs you REALLY don't want to have higher than 2.5% if only for sanity's sake...elachi immediately comes to mind, as does phaser and polaron
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
:::Puts on Decoder Ring:::
Da... Da... Da... DAAAAAA!
Soooo am i right in thinking that it will be another grind fest...
We will get our base levels that will fill up certain amounts of the trees but then anything else will have to be ground out like spec points??.....
When it arrives on Tribble we will know more but for know I refuse to cheer on it's arrival.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
I hereby predict we'll be seeing purchasable skills in lockboxes in a few weeks or months to come. Either that or some other way to monetize this will come out of it.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
That raises a point. Those of us who are not Gold accounts won't have access to Tribble to see the effects of the skill revamp or experiment with them.
When the revamp goes live, we will be forced to select skills immediately. But we won't know in advance how our items and traits have been modified, will we? Are we going to have to select skills blindly?
Whats the amount of "maxed" Spec points we get in the current system as of now? 90 or 120? it was discussed before in other forums but cant remember and just want to make sure at least we get this refunded when the new system starts.
^^ This. I'm extremely skeptical, tbh. For one, a tooltip showing when you traverse and MouseOver a tree, is a lot more confusing then just the flat-out skills screen.
Also, consolidating skills you de facto lose on the deal, as, like Risian4 said, I may want to invest in Graviton Generators, but not in Subspace decompiler, etc.
For the umpteenth time -- Specs are not Skills. We are not touching Specializations, nor have any need to change or refund your points in that regard, when this system revamp goes live.
Your Skills will be reset appropriately.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
why do i get the feeling you were repeatedly bashing your head against your keyboard shortly before typing that?
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"